2022 Indoor Track & Field National Meet Preview
The 2022 NCAA D3 Indoor Track & Field Championships will take place this Friday and Saturday, March 11-12, at the JDL Fast Track in Winston-Salem, NC.
Some athletes will walk onto the 200m Mondotrack haunted by the memory of vacating the 2020 indoor championships. Others will walk in spellbound by the magic of their first-ever national meet. Everyone in attendance, however, will share one perspective: they will be stepping into a living history book. This D3 history book has been redrafted many times throughout the year and has several blank pages reserved for this weekend. As the historians dip their quills in ink, track and field athletes lace up their shoes. They are ready to make 2022 one of the most historic D3 national meets.
The regular season has already produced some of the best performances in D3 history. Seven individual athletes and one relay team have hit all-time best marks, and many more have cracked the top 10 all-time performance list.
All-Time Bests this indoor season
Williams’s Aidan Ryan heads into the weekend with an impressive resume. He has secured two national records so far this season in the mile and 3k. He narrowly missed a third in the men’s DMR when he anchored the event in 3:56. Ryan is entered in all three events this weekend.
With athletes like Ryan raising the bar in men’s distance events, the entire field has experienced a trickle-down effect, making the men’s distance qualifying times faster than they were in 2020. Two years ago, 4:14 was the 20th fastest time in the nation. This year, 18 men ran under 4:10, making the 20th fastest time of the season 4:10.58. Several of these sub-4:10 athletes won’t even make the trip to Winston-Salem after suffering conversions from banked and oversized tracks. The thought that there’s a 4:08 guy sitting on the couch this weekend rather than racing with one of the deepest men’s mile fields in D3 history is incredulous.
The men’s 3k and 5k share a similar narrative. In 2020, the 20th fastest time in the country for men’s 3k was 8:27, while this year, it took 8:19 just to get an opportunity to line up. In the 5k, it took under 14:30 to guarantee a spot this year, while two years ago 14:42 was a safe time to throw down. Thanks to a scratch by MIT’s Matthew Kearney, who will compete in the 3k, Carleton’s Stephen Lavey squeaks in as the last 5k entry with his time of 14:31.
Interestingly, the women’s distance events do not share this depth despite this season’s accumulation of all-time bests. This season, Ella Baran broke the D3 indoor mile record, Kassie Parker ran the fastest 5k and 3k in D3 history, and Esther Seeland ran the second-fastest 800m in D3 history. The 20th time in the nation this year in all four events was only marginally different from that of the 20th fastest time in 2020. These events will still be exhilarating to watch, especially when the aforementioned performers all meet at the starting line of the women’s 3k on Saturday.
Amid impressive depth and standout performances across multiple events this year, here’s a deep dive into what to look out for at this weekend’s national championship.
Team Scores
If a track meet was decided by entries, here’s the top 10. We all know track meets aren’t decided by entries.
Loras leads the women and Wartburg leads the men for team points based on entries going into the national meet. Both Iowa schools will be chased by their Midwest-rivals from Wisconsin, with UW-Oshkosh ranked No. 2 for men and UW-La Crosse No. 2 for women. Rounding out our top-three teams are Williams’s men and Ithaca’s women.
In the women’s team battle, Loras brings two first-ranked athletes, Parker in the 3k and 5k and Alyssa Pfadenhauer in the 400m. They also have Grace Alley ranked top-five in the pentathlon and TJ. Marion Edwards ranked top-five in the 200m and will open for their fourth-ranked 4x4 team. UW-La Crosse brings 16 total entries to the weekend, ten of which have top-ten marks in their respective events. La Crosse will hope to see its biggest points come from field events with Skye Digman ranked No. 1 and No. 3 in the SP and WT, respectively. Ithaca will rely on first-ranked Tia Jones in the 60m and 200m, first-ranked Meghan Matheny in the PV, and fourth-ranked Logan Bruce in the heptathlon. The women of John Hopkins bring a 17-entry squad, the highest of any women’s team entering the weekend. They will look to stack points in the 3k with six athletes entered. Our predictions show a tight battle between the standouts of Loras and the depth of UW-La Crosse for the team victory.
On the men’s side, a victory for Wartburg will ride on the shoulders of standouts Dallas Wright and Deyton Love in the hurdles and sprints. Their top-ten entries in the mile, 3k, 5k, and DMR also seek to score much needed points. UW-Oshkosh has ten athletes entered in sprints, six of whom will compete in the 60m. They also have Jonathan Wilburn ranked first in the TJ. For Wartburg to take home a national championship, they’ll have to score well in distance events as the Titans bring no entries to the mile, 3k, 5k, or DMR and only one entry, Steven Potter, to the 800m.
The battle for second and third will be tight. Loras’s points will likely come from first-ranked Mike Jasa in the 800m, second-ranked Ryan Rogers in the heptathlon, and their top-five marks in the 60m, mile, and DMR. Williams will rely on quality over quantity as distance standout Aidan Ryan is set to bring home top finishes in the mile, 3k, and anchor leg of their second-ranked DMR. If Grahm Tuohy-Gaydos can secure a top finish in the 5k and score well in the 3k, it may be enough to help Williams secure a top-three finish.
Men’s Distance
The men’s distance events are headlined by Williams’s Ryan, who will take on the mile prelim and DMR final on Friday and the 3k and mile finals on Saturday. Ryan currently leads the mile field by 8 seconds, ahead of the No. 2 seed Redlands’s Tucker Cargile. Cargile ran a No. 9 all-time best of 4:04.47 at BU last weekend. Others to watch out for in this race include Ramapo’s Chris Anderson and Wartburg’s Christopher Collett, both of whom have run under 4:07 this season, etching their names into the top-25 fastest marks in D3 history. These names still trail Ryan by a full ten seconds, however. With scratches from 4:05 men Alex Phillip of JCU and Matthew Lecky of RPI, the Williams standout will look for an easy advancement through the rounds, conserving most of his energy to take on JCU’s Phillip in both the DMR and the 3k.
Phillip takes on a heavy load himself this weekend, as he is also entered in the 5k Friday night. He lines up as the 5k favorite, with his 13:58 personal best from December making him the third-fastest 5k runner in D3 history. Phillip will not go uncontested, however, as the freshman standout from Williams, Grahm Tuohy-Gaydos, is seeded just two seconds behind Phillip. Tuohy-Gaydos has the 5th fastest 5k time in D3 history. To add to the depth in this event, nine of this weekend’s entries added their names to the all-time list this season, making 2022 one of the fastest years in D3 history for the men’s 5k. One of these names was Williams’s Elias Lindgren, who ran an early-season 14:15 one month after nearly beating the 2021 XC national champion, Alex Phillip, at the cross country championships in November.
Interestingly, Phillip’s stiffest competition in the 5k will likely be Ryan’s teammates, Tuohy-Gaydos and Lindgren. This could work to the advantage of Williams when it comes to the DMR. Last month, the Williams DMR squad fell just short of the D3 national record when they lost to JCU, the current record holders, at BU. Phillip anchored the relay in 4:02, the efforts of his teammates giving him enough of a lead to outperform Ryan, whose 3:56 leg had him gaining on Phillip the entire way.
Though a DMR matchup between the two anchor legs could be one of the most exciting races of the weekend and a solidifying factor in team scores, it could also mean two hard efforts out of Phillip in a narrow span of 75 minutes, as the 5k and DMR are only separated by 4x4 prelims in the Friday schedule. In terms of team strategy, Williams’s best chance at maximizing points may be to make Phillip work so hard in the 5k against Lindgren and Tuohy-Gaydos that he has to scratch from the DMR and forfeit the chance of scoring the projected ten points for JCU in this event. After all, the squads from Loras and Geneseo will also enter this weekend with DMR times under 9:50, putting them in a position for a possible top-three finish.
Both Ryan and Phillip will double back for a rematch in the men’s 3k. Phillip currently trails Ryan by 13 seconds, entering as the No. 2 seed with his time of 8:07.92, which he ran against Ryan head-to-head in Boston last month when Ryan set the D3 national record of 7:54.48. Behind them, only two other men have dipped under 8:10 this season: Geneseo’s Nick Andrews and Suffolk’s Matyas Csiki-Fejer. Csiki-Fejer is one of the nine men entering this event with fresh legs, as the other 11 competitors have prior miles, 5ks, and DMRs. Simpson’s Spencer Moon was the first competitor out of the 5k, forcing him to concentrate all of his effort into the 3k. Both of these competitors head into Saturday’s 3k with a clean-slate advantage. However, if Ryan is feeling good coming off of a potential victory in the mile, he could become the first athlete in D3 history to win both the mile and 3k at the championships. On the other hand, if Phillip is the one feeling good after a potential victory in the 5k, he could become the third athlete in D3 history to win both the 3k and 5k at the championships. Thus, a battle to make history ensues.
In the 800m, Loras’s Mike Jasa (also running the 800m leg of their DMR) is the favorite to win. Jasa is a defending national champion from the 2021 outdoor 800m. His 1:49.45 from early February puts him No. 6 all-time on the indoor list and makes him the only athlete to run under 1:50 this season. He is joined by track national meet newcomers Kai Dettman of CMS and Ryan Wilson of MIT, who sit at No. 12 and No. 13, respectively, on the all-time list.
Women’s Distance
The women’s 800m event sees even more dominance, as 2x defending national champion Seeland of Messiah enters a full four seconds ahead of the No. 2 seed, Emma Kelley of Wash U. Seeland has come within striking distance of Emily Richards’s all-time best performance of 2:05.28 twice so far this season, first running 2:05.90, then 2:05.39 a week later. An athlete used to taking control of the race early, Seeland could solo a national record this weekend.
This weekend also marks the first time Seeland will compete in two individual events at a national meet, as she is also entered in the women’s 3k. If she were to win both the 800m and the 3k, she would become the first female in D3 history to ever do so at the championship meet. This crown of victory will not come easily, however, as the women’s 3k could be the most competitive event of the entire weekend. It is headlined by Loras’s Parker and Johns Hopkins’s Baran, both of whom have run 9:13 this season to narrowly miss Missy Buttry’s national record. Similar to the men’s 3k, the majority of top competitors entered in this event will line up on tired legs. However, an impressive 13 out of 20 of these athletes were cross country All-Americans in the fall, suggesting their strength base is more than adequate to handle the weekend workload and still produce fast times, perhaps even times fast enough to finally take down Buttry’s record of 9:13.02.
One of the most impressive stats about the women’s 3k is that Johns Hopkins has six women qualified, enough for an entire scoring cross country team plus an alternate. We saw how dominant the Blue Jays were in the fall, and with this many competitors on the starting line, this event has the potential to score big points for Hopkins, perhaps even enough to help them bring home another trophy. Despite the depth of their women’s distance program, Hopkins has never had an indoor national champion. If Baran or one of her teammates can secure the win, they will go down in Johns Hopkins history.
Even if Baran falls short, she is given another chance at making history in the women’s mile, as she heads into the weekend as the D3 national record holder in this event. Her time of 4:40.53 puts her five whole seconds ahead of the rest of the field. If she wins both the 3k and mile, she joins Christy Cazzola as one of the only two women to win both events at the championships.
Baran will not go uncontested, however, as Trine’s Evie Miller holds the No. 2 seed and will look to make a run at the win herself. Miller ran 4:45.13, the 6th fastest time in D3 history, earlier this season. Baran will have a prelim and the mile leg of the DMR on her legs before Saturday’s final, so recovery Friday night will be a huge factor. A big gap exists behind Miller and Baran, as seeds 3-7 on the qualifying list all scratched for different events, making this a showdown intended for these two names alone.
In the women’s 5k, Parker, the 2021 cross country national champion, and Ari Marks of Wellesley, runner-up, will rematch. As she did in the fall, Parker holds a sizable lead ahead of the rest of the field with her time of 15:58, the fastest recorded indoor 5k in D3 history. With this time, Parker became the only woman in D3 history to run under 16 minutes indoors. The next fastest times behind Parker belong to St. Benedict’s Fiona Smith, whose 16:35.24 puts her 12th all-time, and Geneseo’s Kathleen McCarey, whose 16:36.68 has her at 15th all-time. Marks sits not far behind with the 16th fastest 5k all-time. While the women’s 5k doesn’t have the same depth as the men’s 5k, with these four names on the all-time lists and Parker in the lead, it’s sure to be a fast race up front. If Parker can come away with a win in the 5k and double back with a win in the 3k on day two, she will become the third woman in NCAA D3 history to do so after Amy Regan and Taryn Cordani.
In the women’s DMR, nine of 12 teams made the all-time list with their sub-11:50 performances this season. The favorite heading into the weekend is that of Wartburg, made up of Ellie Meyer, Taylan Olson, Carson McSorley, and Aubrie Fisher, a squad that ran a nation-leading time of 11:40.13 at their home meet last weekend. Watch out, however, for the team from UW-Oshkosh, who established some early-season dominance in the middle distances with their squad of Hannah Lohrenz, Libby Geisness, Cyna Madigan, and Zanzie Demco. Lohrenz, Geisness, and Madigan all scratched out of their individual events and loaded up in the DMR, suggesting they mean business on Friday night.
Sprints & Hurdles
You won’t want to miss the men’s 60m dash, as UW-La Crosse’s Sam Blaskowski and UW-Oshkosh’s duo Davian Willems and Jaylen Grant will face off after posting top-6 all-time marks in February. Watch out, too, for Ithaca’s Jalen Leonard-Osbourne, whose 6.74 PR last weekend raises him to 12th all-time. This event is a lot deeper than previous years, as all four of these athletes are entered ahead of the No. 1 seed from 2020. In a race with little room for error, anyone could bring home the national title.
The women’s 60m dash has the potential to be equally exciting, as Ithaca’s Tia Jones and Nebraska Wesleyan’s Maddie Moran enter tied at No. 1 with their shared time of 7.59, the 18th fastest time in history. Behind them, a blanket finish could be expected from Bridgewater’s Adalia Coleman, Mount Union’s Kenadee Wayt, and WashU’s Katelyn Gamble, as the three are separated by a mere 0.01s.
In the men’s hurdles, WPI’s Oliver Thomas will line up for his second national meet of the season. Two weeks ago, Thomas was racing against world qualifier Jarret Eaton and Nike’s Daniel Roberts at the USA Indoor Championships. His time of 7.82 ties him as the second-fastest high hurdler in D3 history and puts him well under the indoor US standard of 8.00, giving him an opportunity to race some of the best hurdlers in the world in Spokane, WA. Now, Oliver lines up against all of D3 with a 0.17s lead and perhaps a little more self-assurance from his experience at USAs. Wartburg, ranked No. 2 as a team going into the weekend, will look to score some much-needed points in this event between Love and Wright, both seeded in the top five.
In the women’s hurdles, a total of six athletes with top all-time marks will face off. They are currently led by Bethel’s Kelsie Sealock, whose 8.56 leads the country by 0.04s ahead of Gustavus Adolphus’s Birgen Nelson and North Central’s Julia Babinec. Top-ranked team UW-La Crosse will look to add to their team total with Emma Lawrence currently seeded No. 4.
The men’s 200m is sure to be fast with Bowdoin’s Ajay Olson and Ramapo’s Cheick Traore up front after running the fourth and sixth fastest times in D3 history, respectively. Add Wartburg’s Dallas Wright, Centre’s JP Vaught, Rowan’s Jah’mere Beasley, and Geneva’s Dom Data to the mix, and we could just see UW-Eau Claire’s Thurgood Dennis’s national record of 21.27 fall this weekend.
The 400m is always an exciting race at nationals as many contenders will be doing double duty across events like the 200, 4x400, and DMR. The women’s race will be stacked with multiple returning All-Americans, but keep an eye out for top-seed Alyssa Pfadenhauer of Loras. She will be looking to earn her first individual title in the 400m after narrowly placing second by 0.2s at the 2021 Outdoor Championship. Pfadenhauer will also anchor Loras’s 4x400m relay. Loras ran a No. 8 all-time 3:48.75 at their conference meet but has entered the national meet with their No. 4 seed B team. Regardless, with a hammer like Pfadenhauer on the end of that relay, it’s sure to be fast. The men’s side will also be hotly contested, with seven athletes running sub-49 second times. The top seed Dallas Wright of Wartburg will be looking to add another trophy to his collection after winning the 400m hurdles in 2019. Kieran Sheridan of SUNY Geneseo is the next top seed, trailing just 0.1s behind Wright, and will be competing in his first individual event at a national meet. Both will face off in the anchor leg of the 4x400m relay with Amara Conte of Rowan, who currently leads this event by four seconds. Conte ran a No. 2 all-time 63.71 in the 500m earlier this year.
Field Events
Field events this weekend are headlined by UChicago’s Isabel Maletich, who tied the national record for the women’s triple jump with her leap of 12.71m two weeks ago. Maletich will compete in both horizontal jumps events this weekend, leading both by a sizable margin. Her long jump mark of 5.96m places her seventh all-time, just nine centimeters outside of the top five.
In women’s vault, defending national champ Meghan Matheny of Ithaca is the only woman this year to clear 4.00m, edging ever closer to fellow Ithaca great Katherine Pitman, who owns the D3 national record of 4.28m in this event. Keep an eye out for the second place seed, All-American Sarah Voit of Oberlin, who placed sixth as a freshman at the 2019 Outdoor Championships.
The men’s long jump is led by La Crosse’s Blaskowski, who is entered in three events this weekend, including the 60m and 200m dash events. As the favorite in both the LJ and the 60m as well as the sixth seed in the 200, Blaskowski is projected to score 23 points for La Crosse. At the very least, he could leave Winston-Salem with three All-American trophies.
Men’s vault saw a surprising scratch from national leader Kyel Wolff of Mount Union, leaving the door wide open for Southern Maine’s Ben Drummey, whose jump of 5.12m sits just ahead of Washington and Lee’s Joe O’Connor, who has cleared 5.10m.
In the men’s high jump, St. John Fisher’s Kyle Rollins enters the weekend after a week in which he was honored USTFCCCA’s National Athlete of the Week for his performance last weekend at the AARTFC Championships. Rollins cleared 2.20m, the third-best mark in D3 history and a mere 2cm away from the national record. Men’s high jump is a national record we could certainly see fall at the national meet this weekend.
In the men’s shot put, UW Stout’s Kevin Ruechel dominates the field by perhaps the largest margin of any event, leading by an astonishing 1.61m with his toss of 18.83 from the Ripon Final Qualifier last weekend. This toss was over a half-meter PR for Ruechel and the fifth farthest throw in D3 history.
Multis
The athlete to watch in the multis this year is UW-Eau Claire’s Marcus Weaver, whose score of 5,533 points in the heptathlon set a new D3 national record and leads the nation by almost 300 points. Perhaps one of the most decorated multi schools in the country, Eau Claire has four men entered in this weekend’s championships—the hard way to score big at the national meet! The battle for second in this event will take place between Loras’s Ryan Rogers and Johns Hopkins’s Justin Canedy, who enter the weekend separated by a mere 27 points.
On the women’s side, watch out for UW-La Crosse’s Hannah Zenkovich, whose score of 3,741 puts her at No. 6 all-time in D3 history. Zenkovich leads the rest of the field by 149 points and sits under 200 points away from the national record of 3,914, a record that could be in danger this weekend.
This weekend is sure to be packed with all that one would expect of a national meet: Cinderella stories, upsets, national records, national history, heartbreaks, and celebrations. While generally nothing is guaranteed at the championships, there is one small certitude—it’s great to be back.
The D3GD team wants to be the first to help you celebrate the return of indoor nationals and will be bringing live commentating in Winston-Salem. Tune in Friday and Saturday on ncaa.com.